June 30: Arequipa

The weather was so pleasant that we had our breakfast outside by the hotel pool. The guidebooks say that Arequipa's climate is similar to southern California's. Arequipa is at about 7500 feet, and the climate is the same all year: dry and sunny. The city doesn't have a water problem since there are so many swift-flowing rivers and streams carrying water down from the high mountains. Just like in every other part of Peru, however, the tap water is not suitable for drinking.

The main square of Arequipa (the Plaza de Armas) was about a 10 to 15 minute walk from our hotel. It is a lovely square, landscaped with lawns, flower beds, and palm trees. Surrounding the plaza on three sides is a portico, and on one side is the cathedral. The cathedral suffered pretty severe damage during the earthquake of 2001, but has been completely repaired.

The morning was spent at the covent of Santa Catalina. The guidebooks say that the convent is the most significant colonial structure in Peru and perhaps in all of South America. It is actually more like a small city than a convent. The complex takes up over 5 city blocks. It looks like a small Andalucian village, with brightly painted structures, flower-filled courtyards and lovely little squares complete with fountains. It was opened in 1579 by the Dominican order as a cloistered convent for women from upper-class Spanish families. In those days, wealthy Spanish families would generally:

• Marry the eldest daughter off to the son of another wealthy family;



• Send the second daughter to the convent;



• Keep the third daughter a spinster so she could take care of the parents in their old age.
  

Most definitely, the daughter who went to the convent got the best deal. She took her servants to the convent with her, was educated, and lived a rather comfortable (although cloistered) life.

We had a light lunch in the convent's restaurant, then went to the other great tourist site of Arequipa, the Museum of the Universidad Católica de Santa María, home of "Juanita, the Ice Maiden of Ampato." Juanita is the frozen body of a young Inca girl who was sacrificed at the top of Mount Ampato probably sometime in the 15th century. She was discovered in the early 1990s during a geological expedition to the summit of the mountain. The geologists were looking at the effect of a nearby volcanic eruption on the ice fields and glaciers on Ampato. The ash fall had caused some of the ice and snow to melt. And that is how they discovered Juanita. She fell about 60 feet from the place where she had been entombed for 500 years and was exposed on the mountainside.

The museum, in addition to the still frozen Juanita, boasts a nice collection of artifacts that were found with her in her icy tomb, as well as other artifacts from other tombs of sacrificial victims.